I Hold With Those Who Favor Fire
by The Hobbit's Rhapsody
Summary: One hundred themes for a High King of the Noldor and his wife the Wise, one hundred words apiece. Fëanor/Nerdanel: runs the gamut from first-meeting fluff to post-Oath heartbreak. Non-chronological. 057: Heart of a child.
1. Life companion

**This will be a series of one hundred drabbles, centered around Fëanor and Nerdanel. I, ahem, took some prompts off LiveJournal. I have about ten written already, so I can guarantee fairly regular updating for at least a little while. ****If at any point you choose to subscribe and have any ideas for anything you'd like to see in this series, please drop me a review or a PM and I'll see if I can work it in! Reviews for any other reason are also wonderful!**

**J. R. R. Tolkien owns Fëanor, Nerdanel, their children, and probably anyone else who crops up.**

* * *

**001: "Life companion."**

He hadn't planned on wedding so soon. He was only teetering on adulthood, barely old enough to be proposing marriage to anyone, let alone a lady with such self-possession as Mahtan's daughter.

(He had no idea that she, too, wondered at how a young Noldo prince who burned with so much passion could think to love her.)

Yet, despite his family's misgivings, and his own wonderment, he knew in the very hour of their meeting that his search was over. He had found his perfect complement.

He hadn't even known he was looking, until he set eyes on her.


	2. What lies beyond forever?

**002: "What lies beyond forever?"**

She begged him to let one of their sons remain behind: one of her youngest, those still nearest in stature and chronology to her heart, those least likely to be of use to their father and his madness.

You will forget me in your vengeance-thirst, as you have forgotten me in your myriad loves.

Not one of you will return, and deathless will I dwell, never to share in your contemplation. If you go, I will not follow. If you die, and return in millennia to Valinor, will I see you again? Would I know you if I did?


	3. Weary wanderer

**003: "Weary wanderer."**

He was not tired. As long as the Black Foe held a fist about his Silmarils—may Varda's hallowing flay him with screams!—energy would pulse within him. Let feet not stop in their pursuit. Let sword not falter, let nothing sway the course of those bound with him.

Only when she crossed his mind's eye did exhaustion pluck at him, as he numbly assimilated one loss to undo another. Only when her words snapped in his ears like hounds at his heels did he lose sight of the path he had laid blackly before himself.

Lost...

He denied it.


	4. Creaking cold

**004. "Creaking cold."**

They were on horseback when they met (she, on Nightingale Fey: no palfrey but a grey blood mare). It must have been the down cloak, her mannish seat in the saddle, the timidly flurrying snow that hid her from him.

The cold conspired to draw them together, for as long as she was covered, he could not see that she was not beautiful by the standards of princes, and by the time it was warm enough that she could not hide her strange plainness, he had turned his mind and heart towards her and his love would not be swayed.


	5. Craftsmanship

**005. "Craftsmanship."**

They knew many among their people wondered at the separateness of their crafts. Fëanor created the most stunning of jewels and metalworks known to the Eldar, and Nerdanel was much famed for her sculptures that might have been mistaken for breathing and waking beings. Why did they not combine their efforts and create a masterwork unrivaled by all the works of their brethren?

Many wondered; they answered only in secret smiles.

Their joint workshop was the darkness, their materials their love. Were not seven sons, a brood unprecedented in all their people's annals, a fine enough accomplishment for their admirers?


	6. Who named the stars?

**006: "Who named the stars?"**

"Dost thou think the stars hear us?"

"What sort of query is that, husband?"

"We lie in the grass and watch the stars; do they gaze back, whispering to Varda what they witness?"

"Must thou always wax philosophical? This may be the only quiet night we have for weeks, with Maitimo and Macalaurë at thy father's."

"How closely do the Valar watch us? When she kindled the stars, did Elentári name them children?"

"Fëanáro—"

"How close are we…truly?"

"Come, husband. The Valar do what is right, under the hand of Ilúvatar. Come, are not kisses sweeter than dark thoughts?"


	7. A child's truth

**007****: "A child's truth."**

"_Amil_?"

She halted her lullaby. "Yes, dearest?"

"Why is _Ata_ gone in the night?"

"He goes to tend his crafts. Your _ada_ makes more wondrous things than any Eldar has ever made before."

"He stays away so long. Does he love his crafts more than he loves Maitimo and Macalaurë and me?"

"No! No, dearest, he will ever love you more. No _atar_ could love his things more than his children."

But even as she held Tyelkormo close and pressed a kiss into his brunet mop, she petitioned Eru in desperate silence that her words would prove her foreboding wrong.

* * *

_Amil_ = Mother (Quenya)  
_Ata_ = Daddy; short form of a_tar_ (father) (Quenya)


	8. And the edges blur

**008****: "And the edges blur."**

The first time they danced in Finwë's hall, all others stopped to watch. Fëanor was pale and raven-haired, garbed in cobalt and silver; Nerdanel was all golds and scarlets.

They were bright and impassioned, two halves of a whole; feet and limbs traveled the complicated movements with such fluidity that observers would afterwards say they sometimes could not tell where one _elda_ ended and the other began.

They moved between worlds.

They transcended sound, transcended all thought but their awareness of one another's movements.

The world was small and the universe was infinite, and they were unrestrained within it.

* * *

_ elda_ = elf (Quenya)


	9. Meeting between reality and dreams

**009: "Meeting between reality and dreams."**

Occasionally she has nightmares. She remembers the fire geysering through the ice, sending her horse into a flight of panic. The monster that follows it, some horrible thing of shadow, the name of which she knows not, leaping at her face, roaring—

Sometimes the dream resolves itself, gives her the fresh terror of seeing another figure, slender sword and war cry unfurled, throwing itself in front of her, driving the beast back into its abyss.

She always wakes before glimpsing her rescuer's face, but when she turns over and sees the burn scars tracing her husband's hips, she feels safe.


	10. The vacuum of time

**A/N: Whew—apologies for the long gap in updates! It's been a busy month, but I have thirty-some drabbles now, so I'll try to be more consistent!**

* * *

**010: "The vacuum of time."**

How long had they dwelled in the same house, nearly one in spirit, nearly one in body? Though Mahtan's daughter barely comprehended all the nuances of the change, she knew she was not the same as she had been in the beginning. Seven sons had reshaped her never-shapely figure into one more befitting her new matronly status.

They had been young, once; they were aged, now, but they were not yet old.

The fire between them had shifted in the embers. Fëanáro? He had not merely changed. _Oh, my love_.

Sometime in the intervening years, he had died altogether.


	11. A time for tenderness

**011: "A time for tenderness."**

Nerdanel shrieked with laughter as a misstep pitched her into the grass. Instantly Fëanor was atop her, apprehending his hard-won prize for a long kiss.

Leaning out of a second-story window, two redheaded elflings stared slack-jawed at the capering king and queen.

"Ambarussa, think you Father is disappointed in himself?"

His twin frowned bewilderedly. Another voice echoed behind them, sounding just as puzzled. "Why would you think that?"

Ambarto addressed his eldest brother with solemn confusion: "Father _always _says if we behave like animals, we'll never amount to anything, but he and Mother are like rutting _hyenas_."


	12. Darkness becomes you

**012****: "Darkness becomes you."**

Nerdanel was not especially beautiful to the eye—prettily passable in face and figure; by whatever quip of Ilúvatar, her _hröa _had failed to do her _fëa_ justice.

In the darkness, she was as much fire as he, and they gladly made their seven sons.

In the darkness, her wit and mind were most useful; when others' lights failed to light the way, her shrewdness came to the fore. Confusion illuminated her wisdom; her vast stack of knowledge was of best use when the books had been burned.

It was in the night that Nerdanel was most beautiful to him.

* * *

_ hröa_ = body (Quenya)  
_ fëa_ = spirit/soul (Quenya)


	13. Out of sight, out of mind

**013: "Out of sight, out of mind."**

She must have forgotten him by now.

How long has he been in Valinor, in the faceless grey of Mandos? Eighty years? Five hundred? Three thousand? There is nothing here but his throbbing thoughts, growing just narrowly more bearable with each passing year.

She had been so cold at his going, her self-possession turned full force against him, and he had been too fey to recognize her agonized rejection for what it was.

Valinor lent itself to, if not forgetfulness, then peace. Surely she never thought of him…though he dwelt on her each hour of his suspended existence.


	14. Amusingly inconsequential

**014: "Amusingly inconsequential."**

Blanching, Fëanor stared at the fallen shelf and mithril shavings covering the smithy floor.

Nerdanel's hand lighted on his shoulder.

"Remember when first I met Finwë, and bowed rather than curtsied?"

"What—"

"Doubtless I wore the same expression then as thee now. This is what thou said to me: "_'Tis fine. 'Tis a small thing; my father is man enough not to care._" And this—is what thou didst to me."

Chuckling, he was already leaning to meet her kiss.

Espying his daughter and son-in-law's silhouette in his shop, Mahtan decided his next commission could wait for morning.


	15. Blue mist

**015****:** **"** **Blue mist."**

Two miles north of Formenos, there ran a clear stream. If one walked along its banks long enough, one might wade through a grove of languorous overhanging willows that curtained off an eddying, waist-deep pool, free of the minnows and carp that populated the rest of of the stream. In the early mornings, fog blanketed it in pristine silence.

Now and again, especially in summertime, Nerdanel took to bathing there—not so much for the solitude or the immediacy of nature, but because she knew if she disappeared at the right time of day, her husband would follow her.


	16. Dragon in the shadows

**016****: "Dragon in the shadows."**

Sometimes, when Fëanáro was away overnight, on a project or a diplomatic visit, she heard things in the darkness. Truly said, it was less _hearing _something than sensing something: a low rumble of discontent, longing, of passion that simmered in the shadows, lingered only at the edges of her senses. A weird burning limned her awareness.

She would walk about her home, dispensing lullabies to her sons to calm…who?

Fëanáro—sometimes she knew not whether he kept away the monsters by his presence, or if it was the Sprit of Fire who haunted her when his _hröa _was absent.

* * *

_ hröa_ = body (Quenya)


	17. The life inside

**Happy Father's Day! (Part I)**

* * *

**017****: "The life inside."**

"_Again?" _Fëanáro stared at his wife, mouth open in shock. "Five sons already, and this womb of thine isn't done yet?"

Nerdanel beamed tiredly up at him. "Mayhaps 'twill be a girl this time."

"Hm." He tipped his head and kissed her, mulling over that idea. "I would have to alter my entire naming strategy."

"As if thou hast ever been one for keeping with convention," she joked, and returned his kiss. "I for one would little mind having a sweet _selda_ instead of all these rambunctious _yondor _thou keeps giving me."

"Oh, but I do _so_ enjoy making them!"

* * *

_selda_ = daughter (Quenya)  
_yondor_ = sons (Quenya)


	18. Ripple effect

**Happy Father's Day! (Part II)**

**A couple quick notes on this one: It's a double drabble, two hundred words; I really felt unable to do the plot bunny justice with the usual one hundred, and hey, it's a special occasion, right?  
****Nerdanel doesn't really feature in this one, but it's still family-centric.  
I also strayed from my usual adherence to archaic thee-and-thou forms for this one, because I didn't think I could quite capture the essence of two arguing little elflings with language that sounds so formal to the modern reader.  
****Thanks for reading!**

* * *

**018****:** **"Ripple effect." **

Fëanor reached out a hand to halt his redheaded eldest as he came plowing into the house, little Macalaurë running after and wailing.

"What's happened?"

"_Ata_—" Macalaurë clamped onto his father's leg. Nelyo folded his arms, standing sullenly by. "Maitimo won't teach me to skip stones."

"Where did you hear about such a silly pastime anyway?" sputtered Maitimo. "I certainly never bothered learning about it."

"Findekáno was playing in the lake. I wanted him to show me how, but his _amil_ called him home. Maitimo's being mean!"

Fëanor glanced from the tears of one boy to the the flushed cheeks of the other. "I know how this problem can be solved quite simply," he said seriously, and the boys both blinked up at him.

"How, Ata?"

"You're looking at Tirion's champion stone-skipper for eighty years running."

Wide went Macalaurë's eyes. "_You_ skipped stones, Ata?"

Solemnly, Fëanor nodded. "It was an honored pastime in the days of my childhood. No _elda_ invested more practice than I."

Macalaurë was beaming eagerly now, and even Maitimo's faux-aloofness had melted into interest. "You'll teach us?"

Fëanor extended hands to both of them. "I can imagine no better way to spend the afternoon."

* * *

_ Amil_ = Mother (Quenya)  
_Ata_ = Daddy; short form of _atar_ (father) (Quenya)


	19. The hand of fate

**This is a tag of sorts to yesterday's Father's Day theme…but decidedly less fluffy. So it gets a Monday spot in the queue.**

* * *

** 019****:** **"The hand of fate."**

"If anyone else had married him, he would have gone long before this."

"_Ata…" _Nerdanel protested softly, pale with sorrow. Mahtan gently stroked her hair, attempting to at once share and alleviate her grief.

"Fëanáro was no monster, but he was not made to live at peace. Eru only knows what thy counsel and thy love averted, and Aulë has my thanks for shaping the wisdom in my daughter. Surely thou—thou and thy strong heart, thy bright wisdom, thy wild love—wert meant for him, and he for thee."

But Fëanáro was gone, and this was horribly little comfort.

* * *

_Ata_ = Daddy; short form of _atar _ (father) (Quenya)


	20. How you suffered for your sanity…

**020****:** **"How you suffered for your sanity."**

A moment existed when she thought he might hear her.

He threw himself screaming into his rage over the rape of his cherished Silmarils. No wisdom then could penetrate the black, starless tempest that mantled him during the day.

He slipped into bed and buried his face in her shoulder. When he trembled with unheard sobs, she knew he wept for his father, and here she steadied his heart, in desperation.

He left and returned with Ilúvatar's fist, an Oath, around his throat and all her sons.

She knew then she was alone in the horror of his going mad.


	21. Disenchanted

**021****:** **"Disenchanted."**

As a child, an avid reader of faery tales, Nerdanel had never been clear on the difference between "unenchanted" and "disenchanted". The differing prefixes seemed merely academical, of no real consequence.

Now she looked at Fëanáro, the prince she worked so hard to unenchant—to free from this obsessive, terrible, false form that was creeping over him—and knew that she was failing. For all her effort, he was only becoming more immersed in his crafts, delighting less in his kingdom, in their sons, in his princess.

In trying to unenchant her prince, she seemed only to be furthering his disenchantment.


	22. Rough hands

**022****: "Rough hands."**

Even in childhood, Atarinkë was the clever one.

He once demanded his parents settle an argument by comparing calluses. He turned over each of their slender hands, inspected them with a keen eye, and eventually declared they would have to work it out themselves. Solemnly, he withdrew.

Amused, Fëanor and Nerdanel obeyed, and eventually found their delicate touches wandering up one another's arms…shoulders…faces…extending beyond the meeting of fingertips…

Repelled, the juvenescent Morifinwë eyed his smug brother sullenly from their vantage in the doorway. "You couldn't have found a less…_kissy_ way of getting them to make up?"


	23. When stillness descends

**023****: "When stillness descends."**

It was the first time since the beginning of the wedding celebrations that quiet had truly settled on them. She lay awake listening to the slack breathing of her new husband as he settled into sleep, stretched out against her, warm and steady. They still lay couched in the fire of their wedding night, a heavy rightness that fit like music among their whispered words.

This was contentment, joy, perfection, given shape in ways that no _tengwar_ could express in fullness.

Yes, theirs was a world of happy thoughts, and she followed her husband, now and always, to happy dreams.…

* * *

_ tengwar_ = writing, script, alphabet (literally _letters_ in Quenya)


	24. Unheard of

**024****: "Unheard of."**

Nerdanel whirled, with everyone else in the hall, at the unmistakable sound of metal rasping against leather. At first she didn't understand the sight before her—one _elda_ standing close to another, a swordtip pressed against his chest.

Fingolfin's face took shape first, eyes wide with shock, palms pressed against the wall behind him. Sable hair obscured the attacker's face, the owner of the white-knuckled fist and the lethal silver blade.

She could not fathom who—or why—

The sword-wielder pulled back—

—the collective gasp of the Noldor was inaudible outside the shocked silence reverberating inside her head.

* * *

_ elda_ = elf (Quenya)


	25. Silver glass

**This marks a quarter of the way through! Thanks to everyone who's with me so far, most especially CrackinAndProudOfIt, who's reviewed every single chapter, and FortuneZyne, my other regular reviewer. You're all the reason any of these see the light of day!**

* * *

**025****:** **"Silver glass."**

Poets wrote tales of the epic journey.

It wasn't simply sentiment; they did. Nerdanel met them, straggling from their white ships onto Valinor's clear shores, the silver expanse behind them unbroken but for the narrow trails of their wake.

The journey into the West was the subject of a thousand pens, artwork orchestrated by those who had been homesick for Aman almost without knowing why, immortalizing the Sea in gorgeous calligraphy.

They wrote, too, of what had transpired in the East. They recorded the deeds done by eight Noldorin lords who would never meet her on these shores.

Bluntly they wrote, and every one of them broke her heart.


	26. Frozen bridges

**Sorry to be absent for so long! I've been busy moving house and only just got Internet access on my laptop again. **

* * *

**026****:** **"Frozen bridges."**

So many sunrises found her awake as she had been all through the night, trembling with sobs, fists clenched and eyes uncloseable. So many hours, her thoughts relentlessly orbited the silhouette of loss, her heart open to the void.

Again and again she tried to bring a torch to the bonds connecting them—stretched thin and tattered across worlds, but still excruciatingly intact, because they had sworn their souls to one another—yet the bridges would not burn, locked in place, repelling her will to forget.

It was agony, loving him still.

Why then could she not let him go?


	27. Miracle

**027: "Miracle."**

Late she woke him one night, eyes wide, glowing with a fusion of joy and amazement. She placed his hand on her stomach, swollen now with five months of pregnancy, and he felt, gentle but definite, an insistent patter from their firstborn's tiny feet.

Clutching his wife close, he wept. He knew not why: unless it was that he felt that he was still too young to be a suitable father, or because the sensation of happiness, having created such a wonder, was beyond his comprehension, and this was the best way his body could think of to express it.


	28. Oathbound

**The direction this prompt seemed destined to go in is obvious, but I hope I put at least a little twist of originality on it.**

* * *

**028: "Oath-bound." **

"I swore an oath, Nerdanel, that cannot be broken!"

She was passionate in her hurt. "And thy vows to me? What of those—am I of such less worth than thy gems that the pledge thou made to love me for all our lives can be so easily swept under the rug? 'If I must break them, I shall break my heart'? We all know of thy regard for the Silmarils—do_ I _hold none of thy heart, Fëanáro?"

"_Meldinya_—"

She reeled back as if struck, then wheeled around to leave.

"Think before thou speakest next time—if thou canst."

* * *

_ meldinya _= beloved (Quenya)


	29. Crimson bloom

**029:** **"Crimson bloom."**

He was oft surprised at how easy it was to make her blush. Small things—a passionate public kiss, a few rightly-placed whispers, a stray gaze and wink when she was dressing—made her face flame like her hair, and her smile flare with it. Others could do it, too: a timely joke about her love of books or sincere flattery of her crafts would pink her cheeks.

Making _him_ blush to match was a good deal harder. More than a tease—it took all of her considerable wifely powers, but there were few rewards she prized as highly.


	30. You must hold what you cannot keep

**030:** **"You must hold what you cannot keep."**

"Thou gavest them the same _name_?"

"They are of one mind, as they were one body inside mine." She could not explain the compulsion she had had to give her youngest sons, twins, the same mother-name. "It seemed fitting."

"No. I'll not have this; give one of them another name."

Irritation and some shadow of darkness, beyond emotion, swept over her; she spoke without realizing. "Then let one of them be called Umbarto, and may the fate thou hast placed on him by this never come to pass."

Cradling the infants closer, she strode away before witnessing Fëanáro's blench.


	31. Knowledge in death—wisdom in immortality

**031: "Knowledge in death, wisdom in immortality."**

As Atarinkë sat beside her and talked, she was again struck at how completely he resembled his father.

"…think of all we can learn, _Amil. _A land, Eru-made, Valar-ruled—ours for the exploring—"

(Nerdanel's children well knew her penchant for learning.)

"A land blackened already by Melkor," she said bitterly. "You may learn, but you will know only death as you go forth."

"Unthinking bliss is better served than new experience, even painful?"

She eyed him squarely, and the rebuke in her dark eyes was visceral. He rose.

"All our people count you wise, _Amil_, but you are wrong."

* * *

_ Amil_ = Mother (Quenya)


	32. Too much to hold

**032:** **"Too much to hold."**

Fëanáro was clever.

He snared Nerdanel's heart—wooed her with gifts, with a thousand different uses for her time, with solutions to any small problem that might arise. Just as her first love was sculpture (her second was books; that entranced him), his eyes lit up when his hands began a craft.

Married, he still romanced her—courted her both diligently and passionately, possessing a seemingly inexhaustible store of ways to make her laugh.

She shaped him in miniature (any fixed image would be fragmentary; he was uncontainable) a thousand times, trying to predict him; yet always he outwitted her.


	33. You raise me up

**033: "You raise me up."**

Someday he would make her queen.

Until now, she hadn't truly considered it. She had seen only the love of the lightning-souled man, quick with hands and laughter. She had seen only her Fëanáro, and forgotten that he was a prince, destined to ascend a throne over her whole nation.…

Fëanáro pinned her auburn braids with a sapphire. "Thou'rt perfect." He pressed a kiss into her hair.

"I fear this may be an unfit place for a crown."

"If our people think me kingly—" He kissed her into silence. "They can think thee no lesser, for thou'rt my completion."


	34. Betrayal

**034:** **"Betrayal."**

Why dost thou paint the Valar wise or omniscient? The Valar cannot understand us. Too high art they— too wroth, too close kin to Morgoth! —unfit to call themselves guardians of Arda!

One imagines they see into the heart of Eru himself, so soberly they speak in council! Yet ignorance is as much their lot as ours. We owe them nothing.

At the world's death, they shall know their folly and the intricacy of their mistakes, understand how they have failed us….

(Oh, I cannot bear thy grieving eyes…but they burn also with rebuke, and that is almost worse.)


	35. Messenger

**035: "Messenger."**

The eagles have ever been a friend to the family of Finwë, though Nerdanel thinks this youngling looks grudgingly dutiful at best.

"_Hiril."_ He sets the missive in her outstretched hand and is again blending into the empyrean blue.

Dread begins trembling in her fingers as she breaks the seal. The rustic _tengwar_ of her youngest's handwriting, strangely blotched, is both a comfort and a terror, amplified hundredfold as Ambarussa's words take shape.

Umbarto is dead. Immolated by his own father.

Before this moment, she has never been paralyzed between grief and hatred.

It is the most ghastly sensation imaginable.

* * *

_ Hiril_ = Lady (Sindarin)  
_ tengwar_ = writing, script, alphabet (literally _letter_ in Quenya)


	36. Fall from grace

**036: "Fall from grace."**

The vast, immutable figure robed in stillness and shadow looms over him, Master of these Halls.

_I would bid thee welcome, Fire-Spirit, but "welcome" is too esoteric for thee._

_Why am I here?_ He feels much too childlike here.

_Thou knowest well why._

_To…understand? I didn't listen…_

He'd been granted harbingers aplenty: his half-brother, his youngest son, his wife, the very Lord who stood before him.

Stone sternness looks back at him. _One of thy more superficial crimes._

Nerdanel's face flames before him, suddenly awful in its vividness.

_Yet the most painful with which to begin._


	37. Caught in the act

**037:** **"Caught in the act."**

"Fëanáro…what art thou _doing?"_

Caught off-guard by the sudden, half-shocked, half-amused tone of his wife's voice, Fëanor turned sheepishly to face her. "Cleaning?"

She didn't move her gaze from the sight in front of her. "_Why?"_

"Well—thou hast looked so weary of late, with the babes always underfoot—I thought I might be of some help around the house."

Laughing, she took his arm. "As much as I appreciate the sentiment—and I very much do, _carpalima venno—_there are far more efficient ways to clean house without diverting half the bay into our kitchen."

* * *

_ carpalima venno _= clever husband (Quenya)


	38. Dying sun

******A/N: Apologies for the long delay in updating! I haven't been on ffn much the last few weeks, what with the beginning of a new semester.  
I also wanted to thank my guest reviewer for chapter 37, and the two anons who left comments on chapter 25: _amlug _and_ A-Nony-Mouse._ Even though I can't PM you, know that I appreciate every bit of feedback, even if it's just to let me know you're reading!**

* * *

**038:** **"Dying sun."**

The hour when the light of the Trees mixes is always brilliant. Flagrant colors strike the sky and snake through the mountains like a river, a stream of pure spirit from which one could live forever if one could but catch it up and drink from it.

It is this glory and mystery at which we marvel silently, as we sit on the terrace and soak in the warmth of the Trees and one another.

"'Twill be cold tonight."

"Do not sleepless Eldar make beds solely for that purpose?"

I might have answered, but are not actions preferable to words?


	39. Sensation of loss

******A/N: Thanks to anonymous reviewer _Sobhan_, for chapter 38!**

* * *

**039**: **"Sensation of loss."**

Her voice does not break as she asks him, once more, to stay.

He answers her in the negative, haughty and contemptuous, triumphant, beyond frustration now.

She has nothing more to say; these are her final words. She turns away from him, her face now utterly blank—there is no sorrow, no apology, no anger. She shuts him out completely.

For a split instant, he shatters, before his strength of purpose reforms him. But though he shoves the thought from his mind, it sticks down in him somewhere, a nettle to gouge at his sanity.

He is mortal after all.


	40. Off the map

**040:** **"Off the map."**

Nerdanel pulled up Lómelindë Marta and peered about the blank crags of snow around them. The cobalt of the Prince's cloak appeared out of the heavy flurry as he rode up beside her, but of the rest of the party she could see nothing.

"Where are we?"

He shrugged—then his gloved hand had slipped under her hood and then his lips, hot and intent, were on hers—and in her shock she forgot they were lost, and in his heat she forgot the cold.

For the price of a first kiss, she found she very little minded such trivialities.

* * *

_Lómelindë Marta_ = Quenya for Nightingale Fey, the name I gave Nerdanel's mare in #004.


	41. Golden shield

**041: "Golden shield."**

Their gazes locked: two elven queens, fixated on one another. Artanis' hair glistened as if with its own radiance; beholding it, Nerdanel resisted the urge to smooth her own coiffure self-consciously.

For an instant they stared, before the White Lady turned to the _elda_ on her other side. Involuntarily, Nerdanel closed a fist, angry on Fëanor's behalf that Artanis should be so swollen on her own beauty that she turned away all comers.

A wave of insecurity followed…all her muscles slackened.

Then her husband's eyes, as he appeared across the room, barely touched Artanis, and settled on her.


	42. Counting years

**I apologize for another long delay, everyone. I came down with the flu and got behind on schoolwork. Hopefully that shouldn't happen again! Thanks for reading. Thanks also to Sobhan, for the anyonymous review of last chapter!**

* * *

**042**: **"Counting years."**

Fëanáro shaped the silver tree as a wedding gift, with help from her father. Each year for his wife's begetting-day, he would craft a flower from some spectacular gem and graft it seamlessly to the tree for her to find. Hundreds of blossoms, each one unique, sprout from the graceful limbs.

But Fëanáro has been at Formenos in exile these five years. The bloom from six years ago, an elaborate triquetra of copper and garnet, curves proudly up from its branch, still the foremost flower on the tree.

She runs a finger along its gently fluted edges, and misses him.


	43. Only sleeping

**Good golly…a month's hiatus? If anyone is still looking for updates, you have my profuse apologies. College and NaNoWriMo: my only excuses. I'll try to update regularly over the next several days.  
Thanks to FortuneZyne for pointing out a nomenclatural error in #42, which I have corrected.**

* * *

**043:** **"Only sleeping."**

They called it sleep, but as historians later reported, it was a different thing to the Eldar than that of the same name done by Men. Sleep was wakeful dreaming, oneness with shadow and light, a time when one transcended the world without fully leaving it.

She saw visions of them when they were gone: the night filled her mind with vague, jagged images of all their doings. Sometimes they were true; sometimes lies, haunts of her own nervous heart.

But this one, she knew with awful clarity as she stood witness to an arson of swans, was no dream.


	44. Black and white

**044:** **"Black and white."**

A rustle alerted Finarfin to another presence on the balcony. Turning, he greeted his sister-in-law as she stepped up beside him.

"Pensive dreams?" he inquired, but Nerdanel seemed not to hear.

She spoke at last. "Why wilt thou follow him across the Sea?"

Finarfin paused. "He is wrong. I know it, yet my children cannot see it. It is right that I go, for their sakes."

"Thou followest as I stay."

"Love is complex," he agreed. "Even if to Fëanáro it is simple now, he will see the light once more."

They fell silent, trying to believe it.


	45. Last time

**045:** **"Last time."**

He stood in her doorway, wishing she would come.

"_Namárië_, _hirinya._"

"_Vanwalye_. I'll not wish thee _vanya sulië_."

The agony hung between them, and on an impulse he reached for her cheek and pulled her into a kiss. For a long moment she sank into him, perfectly fitted, achingly soft, remembered passion resurrected by tactility that had so long been absent— then she stiffened, silk morphing into wood, and her quick, delicate fingers were pushing him away.

"_Na," _she commanded softly, brittlely. "If thou leavest, thou leavest completely, and _va_ _linya_."

He turned, and his next breath was only cold.

* * *

_Namárië_, _hirinya_ = farewell, my lady (Quenya)

_vanwalye_ = I lost [thee] (Quenya)

_vanya sulië_ = fair winds (a common farewell in Quenya)

_na_ = go (Quenya)

_va linya_ = I will not follow (Quenya)

(If you like, I'll PM you with an apology for the large amount of gratuitous Elvish in this chapter.)


	46. Samhain

**046: "Samhain." **

—Snow falls thick tonight under Telpërion's glow. Rememberest thou when we met?

—Yes. Thou wert all full of fire, and I wrapped in furs.

—All I could see was thy hair, blazing in sun, and thy eyes, and _these_ full lips—

—Such temerity! Have three hundred years done nothing to dampen thy enthusiasm?

—Oh, but beauty knows no time—that which is worth loving is immortal.

—They light the lamps in the valley. Shall we descend and join the dances?

—Need I defend thee there as I once did? With words rather than blade?

—Make the way, my clever craftsman.

* * *

_A/N: Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival celebrating the first day of winter and the new year (I believe it's now celebrated on our November 1st). I imagine there's probably some equivalent in Aman, or at the very least in Middle-Earth, but I don't know what it would be called, so the drabble title remains the same as the prompt that inspired it._


	47. Equinox

**047: "Equinox."**

We have reached a stalemate: the time when day and night are level, and the sun and moon have equal place in the eyes of their watchers.

Neither of us shall give way. What are we to do: stand and stare at one another, words exhausted, stone trying futilely to chip away at stone while the elements gust around us, tear at us, wear us down into Eru's void?

Wilt thou not be moved?

This equality of love is almost unendurable. I fear I shall soon shatter, and thou shalt watch my fragments scatter like stars in the split sky.


	48. Fire and ash

**048: "Fire and ash."**

But she never spoke her doubts.

Was it fair of her to ask him to put aside "his" passions for "her own"?

(Since when had they required differentiation?)

She had always known his fire was unutterably great, that she could not match it on its highest, brightest days. Now she had fallen behind, her own fire guttering as the kindling crumbled away.

Is this how history would remember them? Fëanáro, a solar storm obliterating every shadow that dared advance against his glorious nimbus, and Nerdanel, a fragile matchstick reduced to nothing in the hurricane that only made him stronger?


	49. Smoldering heart

**049: "Smoldering heart."**

His arms swept around her from behind, a kiss in her hair softening her startled reaction.

"Thou art home," she breathed, turning her head to take in the smell of saddle leather, and the tang of metal which always coated his skin. "I've missed thee."

"As I have thee. I hope I've not returned to find thy love sucked dry by those _ulundoer_ we call our children?"

Laughing, she turned smoothly in his grasp, smiling fiercely as her gaze settles on his face.

"Never. My heart will never be empty so long as my Fëanáro is here to fill it."

* * *

_ulundoer_ = monsters (Quenya)  
* I'm not 100% sure I pluralized _ulundo_ correctly; please correct me if you know better!


	50. As the wind kindles the fire

**050: "As the wind kindles the fire."**

They said Fëanor's birth drank the life from his mother, that Míriel gave all her _fëa_ to this one son and kept none for herself. He was the Spirit of Fire, the _elda_ who lived enough life for four.

Nerdanel was the river and the wind, the tree and the clouds. She brooked the inferno; she reflected the blaze; she kindled the embers. As he worked, she shaped his fire. As she whispered, he inflamed her joys. As one they moved in the world, ever countering and complementing each work of the other.

It really was no wonder, their love.

* * *

_elda_ = elf (Quenya)  
_fëa_ = spirit/soul (Quenya)

* * *

**A/N: And we're halfway through! It's a strange thought; there've been points when I wasn't totally sure this project was going to make it this far. _Hantanyel—_Thanks so much to everyone who's followed, read (8600 views?! wow!), favorited, and reviewed thus far, especially CrackinAndProudOfIt, my regular, and Ruadhnait, who's just joined the ranks. All support is very much appreciated!**


	51. Asleep at dawn

**051: "Asleep at dawn."**

She loved the mornings—when Laurëlin began shining through Calacírya, gold waxing and bleeding into waning silver. She would wake at its opening, buried in pillows with a leatherbound volume borrowed from Tirion's great library. An hour she would pass in pleasant quiet, until Fëanáro roused and turned her attention elsewhere.

This morning, however, it was Fëanor who lay wakeful, idly watching his wife wander deep in dreams. Only when dawn's hour had passed, Telpërion having faded into daylight, did he trail feather-light fingertips over her collarbone, enjoying her soft hitch of breath as she stirred.

_"Mára tuilë, melda."_

* * *

_Mára tuilë, melda_ = Good morning, beloved. (Quenya)


	52. Recoil

**052: "Recoil."**

As much as their marriage took the Noldorin nobility aback, the bridegroom was perhaps the most surprised when he found what he had gotten into.

Fëanor knew Mahtan's daughter could be passionate—violent in defense of her convictions, ravenous in her pursuit of knowledge, intense in the perfection of her sculptures—yet he had not expected such extravagant return of his love.

For all her outer quietude, Nerdanel matched his fire spark for spark, his love breath for breath.

His marriage had stolen social credit from him; Nerdanel, coexisting with him, had given him everything he longed for in return.


	53. Unfinished tale

**A/N: the second paragraph is mostly poetic license. I do realize that time was being recorded in the First Age.**

* * *

** 053: "Unfinished tale."**

Eternity is endless.

We are Eldar, born in the age before time existed, when Valinor's Trees marked the coming and going of nights and days, and in peace we thought nothing of letting it slip past unmarked.

Now its maw opens wide before me. Always, it is fire: I am birthed and slain in flame. Gothmog sends me to Mandos, and in this bare fraction of an instant I find myself suddenly remembering that thou livest, that I loved thee...We began a story never meant to finish. There was neither necessity nor sweetness in its end—how desperately I suddenly want t—


	54. Living nightmare

**054: "Living nightmares."**

Tell me thou hast an answer for this, _meldinya_. I cannot say it aloud, but I—along with many others, all the Noldor—know that thou art wise.

Grief swims in thine eyes: eyes that see me hidden, dying, within the unraveling thing that wears my form. Beholdest thou the silent war, the crusade of purpose. Knowest thou that I am losing, that thy _venno_ withers in the name of hatred and this thing he wouldst call love.

I know not what thou wilt call him, when he has cast off sanity, but I mourn with thee for my own death.

* * *

_meldinya_ = beloved (Quenya)  
_venno_ = husband (Quenya)


	55. Tempting enigma

**055: "Tempting enigma."**

Nerdanel found Fëanor in his shop, scowling at a tourmaline statuette he'd been chiseling.

"Atarinkë and Tyelkormo have been in a duel of silence all day," she said wearily, "and I can neither wring the source of their argument from them nor get them to bed. Might I have thy assistance?"

Fëanor set aside his tools, still staring at his half-finished work. "Somehow the proportions are wrong," he muttered. "Trade puzzles, _vessë?_" Figurines were Nerdanel's métier, albeit usually with a different medium.

Her fingers slid over his. "The sooner our troubles are solved, the sooner to bed?"

"Where else?"

* * *

_vessë_ = wife (Quenya)


	56. No one mourns the wicked

**Hi all, and happy 2013! Sorry for the hiatus: busy holidays, and then I was at a church conference across the country for five days. I hope your Christmas and New Year (if you celebrate them) were lovely! I don't have a whole lot to do for the next few months besides hunt for a job, so hopefully we'll be back into the swing of things soon.**

* * *

**056**: **"No one mourns the wicked."**

Mayhaps it was a true saying—had anyone lamented when Melkor had been thrown into the Void?

Yet while there was little grief spared for Fëanor Curufinwë, a mourner there was.

_She_ still mourned him, in the nooks of moments, in the crannies of days. Infrequently she recalled him now, but when she did there was still a vibrant pain. She faced it, tamped it down, and went on.

She felt it in her bones, perhaps like mortals feel age: pricking at her joints, pulling at her skin.

Determinedly she bore it, knowing that she alone yet remembered his heart.


	57. Heart of a child

**057: "Heart of a child."**

Nerdanel is working with figures small enough to be held in the hands, as her shapely swollen belly limits her ability to bend on a stool. Fëanor watches her with a smile before sauntering in to kiss her hair.

"Hast thou been planning a mother-name for our son?"

"A woman thinks of names for her children before she is even wedded. Hast thou a father-name yet?"

"I've a few thoughts…shall we commiserate?"

"And break tradition?"

"Thou speakest as if such a break were unprecedented."

She rolls her eyes. "Truly, thou art the silliest of all my beloved."


End file.
